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Chapter 2

Translation

All under heaven realizing beauty as beauty, wickedness already.
All realizing goodness as goodness, no goodness already.
Hence existence and nothing give birth to one another,
Difficult and easy become one another,
Long and short form one another,
High and low incline to one another,
Sound and tone blend with one another,
Front and back follow one another.
Considering this, the wise person manages without doing anything,
Carries out the indescribable teaching.
Don’t all things on earth work and not shirk.
Give birth to and yet not have,
Do and yet not depend on,
Achieves success and yet not dwell.
The simple man alone does not dwell,
Because of this he never leaves.

16) <grm> is (yes <frml> this; that) use (<v> take <p> according to; because of <adj> so as to <conj> and) no (not) go (leave; remove; get rid of). 是以不去。(shì yĭ bù qù)

Third Pass: Chapter of the Month10/01/2016

Corrections?

Lines 3,6,8: I deleted the extra comma at the end of those lines. How did they get there? In the Word for Word section, I changed ride to rid… “get rid of”

Reflections:

All under heaven realizing beauty as beauty, wickedness already.
All realizing goodness as goodness, no goodness already.

I can’t help but think of nature when considering anything to do with beauty, wickedness, or goodness. For the life of me, I can’t find any of these description true of the natural world. The natural world is reality, unlike all the human machinations we deem true and real. Indeed, beauty, wickedness, and goodness simply come down to describing what “I” love or hate. Such skewed human judgments say volumes about the observer and nothing about the thing observed.

The problem with giving our emotional preferences labels like this is that it confers on them a universality that isn’t truly there. Our subjective judgment of life — what we need and fear — becomes set in cognitive concrete and voilà, we believe. The act of believing makes the fantasy feel real. This seems so obvious and yet any true believer will be blind to it. It is almost as if the judgments we make become our ‘friend’. We marry our beliefs.

To be honest, this always strikes me oddly. You would think I’d be used to this idiosyncrasy of humanity by now. I suppose my rational side is always bewildered by what it sees as irrational. Actually, this incongruity feels like it is the wellspring of humor. I mean, laughter is a good way, perhaps the only way, to…

Hence existence and nothing give birth to one another, and the next 5 lines present what for me is the natural and rational view. However, if taken at full value, I imagine these lines would come across to many as being irrational and even absurd. They know that good and evil are true and real in their own right. The ‘experts’ told them so.

Existence and nothing give birth to one another culminate in line 9, Considering this, the wise person manages without doing anything. Now we know what makes one wiser!

The more viscerally we feel that existence and nothing give birth to one another, the less likely we are to choose sides. In a subjective sense, it becomes difficult to say whether you are doing or not doing, for each gives rise to the other. Or perhaps more accurately, neither is actually true. They cancel out each other. Two side of a coin, yet it really is just one coin. Dialectic cognition distinguishes a difference, which is useful for manipulating nature to boost survival. However, too much of a good thing is what we are faced with now.

Having a word that connects to an experience locks you into and exaggerates the experience. The difficulty here is that it’s no longer the actual experience, but rather your thoughts about the experience. Here, all past memories along with current needs and fears now influence what you think you know. No wonder chapter 71 refers to such certainty as a disease — Realizing I don’t’ know is better; not knowing this knowing is disease.

These lines toward the bottom of this chapter describe for me how all life on Earth approaches the labor of living.

Don’t all things on earth work and not shirk.
Give birth to and yet not have,
Do and yet not depend on,
Achieves success and yet not dwell.

Naturally, we humans approach life this way to an extent, depending on how much cognitive baggage we drag behind us. That baggage we cherish is what maintains our illusion of self. That’s why we cherish it. As Buddha put it, “The illusion of self originates and manifests itself in a cleaving to things”. We hang on to keep our ego illusion alive and well. Thus, we have a large stake in the success we achieve, the things we do, the creations we give birth to.

The simple man alone does not dwell,
Because of this he never leaves.

Why is it that the simple man alone does not dwell? This connects back to Buddha’s Second Truth; the less one cleaves to things, the less “illusion of self” – ego – will be complicating one’s life; the simpler one will inevitably become. By holding onto nothing that much, what is there to dwell upon? By not dwelling upon anything much, he never leaves his original self for the illusion of self.

Second Pass: Work in Progress11/24/2012

Issues:

I made a number of tweeks in this chapter. All under heaven realizing beauty as beauty, wickedness already expresses the view a little more concisely without loss, in my view. Next, I saw how I was bouncing back and forth between one another and each other, for the same Chinese original characters, xiāng (相) each other; one another; mutually. I don’t know why, so I picked one another.

I replaced but with and yet. The Chinese word is Ér (而) which is a conjunction and means both actually. For some reason and yet seems to paint a smoother transition that but. Maybe it is just the sound these words make?

Commentary:

Sound and tone blend with one another, has two characters, ‘sheng‘ (声) and ‘yin‘ (音), that both mean “sound” in various ways. They are so similar and so obviously out of sync with contrasting aspect of the other ‘one another‘ examples. Why doesn’t this say “sound” and “silence” off set one another, for example. Did the meaning of ‘sheng‘ (声) change, or perhaps (though less likely) ‘yin‘ (音)? Or is it a Taoist trick, messing with word meaning a bit just to encourage this question? All in all though, I’m happy with Sound and tone blend with one another.

The only real way to feel that ‘All realize goodness as goodness, no goodness already is from neutral impartiality. The biological/zoological origin of beauty and goodness is simply emotional preference. Long ago we uttered a sound for that which made us feel ‘good’; that sound eventually lead to the words such as ‘good, love, like, right, true, beautiful’. For me, leaving beauty and goodness at their personal preference (feeling) origin is what the last two lines speak to: The simple man alone does not dwell, Because of this he never leaves. Doing any more than that just makes mountains of out molehills. In other words, feel and never leave that; ‘capturing’ feeling through naming externals and dwelling on them through out life is just hauling excess baggage, i.e., Only when restricted, are there names.

Feeling both good and bad, life and death, (and any other opposites) as sharing something called profound samenessgoes against our biological core. Nature hoodwinks us into ‘liking what we like’ and ‘hating what we hate’ and ensuring that never the twain shall meet. In the end, it is not essential that one actually feel the underlying connection between opposites; it is enough to acknowledge through ‘faith’ that the connection exists. Not blind ‘faith’ mind you, but an extrapolation from personal experience. Merely find profound sameness where you can, in less emotionally charged situations. Then, simply give the benefit of the doubt to the possibility of this existing everywhere despite your inability to perceive it (i.e., the blind spot). At least then, blind belief is pointing the mind in a ‘true’ direction (true in the Schrodinger’s cat sense of quantum weirdness).

Suggested Revision:

All under heaven realizing beauty as beauty, wickedness already.
All realizing goodness as goodness, no goodness already.
Hence existence and nothing give birth to one another,
Difficult and easy become one another,
Long and short form one another,
High and low incline one another,
Sound and tone blend with one another,
Front and back follow one another.
Considering this,
the wise person manages without doing anything,
Carries out the indescribable teaching.Don’t all things on earth work and not shirk.
Give birth to and yet not have,Do and yet not depend on,
Achieves success and yet not dwell.
The simple man alone does not dwell,
Because of this he never leaves.

First Pass: Chapter of the Week10/18/2008

I find that insight comes not from any answers that a translation (or anything else) offers, but rather from the questions it (or experience) evokes. Questions, puzzlement, mystery all turn the light of Consciousness on, while answers just put it to sleep. That’s all right though; sleep feels good too.

Of course, as this chapter suggests, answers and questions give birth to each other. In light of this, how shall I proceed? Sit as loose to life as possible is the advice this chapter gives. If both sides of everything are so intimately intertwined (inseparable) holding out for one side or the other feels like an unrelenting struggle. Therefore, considering this, the wise person manages without doing anything… This defies common sense naturally. Yet, it is the only way that actually works. I’d paraphrase it this give birth to each other process as ‘All under heaven realize common sense as common sense, there is folly already’.